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The Abraham Dilemma: A Divine Delusion focuses on the topic of religious delusion - on the disorder's causes, contents, consequences, diagnosis and treatment. The title argues that we ...
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The Abraham Dilemma: A Divine Delusion focuses on the topic of religious delusion - on the disorder's causes, contents, consequences, diagnosis and treatment. The title argues that we cannot understand a religious delusion without appreciating three facts. One is that religiosity or spirituality is a part of human nature, whether it takes theistic or non-theistic forms. Another is that religious delusion is something to which we are all vulnerable. The third is that the delusion is not best understood by reducing it to brain chemistry, or by insisting that it is empirically false. It is best understood by examining its harmful personal and moral consequences - consequences that nearly unfolded when the biblical patriarch Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac in response to a command, he thought, from God.Less

This thought-provoking resource presents an original philosophical analysis bringing together addiction and weakness of will. The author develops an integrated account of these two ...
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This thought-provoking resource presents an original philosophical analysis bringing together addiction and weakness of will. The author develops an integrated account of these two phenomena, rooted in a classical conception of akrasia as valuing without intending and at the same time intending without valuing. This fascinating and suggestive account addresses a number of paradoxes faced by current thinking about addiction and weakness of will, in particular the significance of control and intention for responsible action. Addiction and Weakness of Will makes an original contribution to central issues in moral psychology and philosophy of action, including the relationship between responsibility and intentional agency, and the nature and scope of moral appraisal. Less

Many of the current debates about validity in psychiatry and psychology are predicated on the unexpected failure to validate commonly used diagnostic categories. The recognition of this ...
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Many of the current debates about validity in psychiatry and psychology are predicated on the unexpected failure to validate commonly used diagnostic categories. The recognition of this failure has resulted in what Thomas Kuhn calls a period of extraordinary science in which validation problems are given increased weight, alternatives are proposed, methodologies are debated, and philosophical and historical analyses are seen as more relevant than usual. In this important new title in the IPPP series, a group of leading thinkers in psychiatry, psychology, and philosophy offer alternative perspectives that address both the scientific and clinical aspects of psychiatric validation, emphasizing throughout their philosophical and historical considerations.Less

Autonomy and Mental Disorder explores the nature and value of autonomy with reference to mental disorder, reflects on instances of mental disorder where autonomy is apparently compromised, ...
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Autonomy and Mental Disorder explores the nature and value of autonomy with reference to mental disorder, reflects on instances of mental disorder where autonomy is apparently compromised, and offers a systematic discussion of the underlying presuppositions of the present autonomy debates.Less

How should we deal with mental disorder - as an "illness" like diabetes or bronchitis, as a "problem in living", or what? This resource seeks to answer such questions by going to their ...
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How should we deal with mental disorder - as an "illness" like diabetes or bronchitis, as a "problem in living", or what? This resource seeks to answer such questions by going to their roots, in philosophical questions about the nature of the human mind, the ways in which it can be understood, and about the nature and aims of scientific medicine. Less

This resource is an interdisciplinary exploration of the nature of delusions that brings together the psychological literature on the aetiology and the behavioural manifestations of ...
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This resource is an interdisciplinary exploration of the nature of delusions that brings together the psychological literature on the aetiology and the behavioural manifestations of delusions, and the philosophical literature on belief ascription and rationality. It suggests that delusions are continuous with ordinary beliefs, a thesis that could have not only significant theoretical implications for debates in the philosophy of mind and psychology, but also practical implications for psychiatric classification and the clinical treatment of subjects with delusions.Less

This resource brings together philosophers and psychiatrists to explore the conceptual issues raised by this increasingly common illness. Drawing on a variety of philosophers, the authors ...
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This resource brings together philosophers and psychiatrists to explore the conceptual issues raised by this increasingly common illness. Drawing on a variety of philosophers, the authors explore the nature of personal identity in dementia, showing how the lives and selfhood of people with dementia can be enhanced by attention to their psychosocial and spritual environment. Less

This resource is the first in the IPPP series to explore this highly complex topic. Though many of the ethical issues important in adult mental health are of relevance in the child, there ...
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This resource is the first in the IPPP series to explore this highly complex topic. Though many of the ethical issues important in adult mental health are of relevance in the child, there are a considerable number of issues special to children. Many of the dilemmas faced pertain to diagnosis, treatment, the protection of the child, as well as the child's own developing intelligence and moral judgement. In addition, there are cases where the interests of the parents may conflict with the interests of the child. For example, the interests of a mother with schizophrenia might best be served by her continuing to look after her child, but the child's interests might require that a substitute placement be found. This online guide brings together a collection of clinicians and philosophers who consider a range of topics central to the diagnosis and treatment of children and adolescents affected by mental disorders.Less

This resource was created to help practitioners better understand and treat those suffering from schizophrenia and manic-depressive illnesses, and using self-descriptions, its emphasis is ...
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This resource was created to help practitioners better understand and treat those suffering from schizophrenia and manic-depressive illnesses, and using self-descriptions, its emphasis is not on how mental health professionals view sufferers, but on how the patients themselves experience their disorder.Less

Overcoming the brain centrism of current neuroscience, Ecology of the Brain develops an ecological and embodied concept of the brain as a mediating or resonance organ. Accordingly, the mind ...
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Overcoming the brain centrism of current neuroscience, Ecology of the Brain develops an ecological and embodied concept of the brain as a mediating or resonance organ. Accordingly, the mind is not a product of the brain: it is an activity of the living being as a whole, which integrates the brain in its superordinate life functions. Similarly, consciousness is not an inner domain located somewhere within the organism, but a continuous process of engaging with the world, which extends to all objects that we are in contact with. The traditional mind–brain problem is thus reformulated as a dual aspect of the living being, conceived both as a lived or subjective body and as a living or objective body. Processes of life and of experiencing life are inseparably linked. Hence, it is not the brain, but the living human person as a whole who feels, thinks, and acts. This concept is elaborated on a broad philosophical, neurobiological, and developmental basis. Based on a phenomenology of the lived body and an enactive concept of the living organism as an autopoietic system, the brain is conceived in this book as a resonance organ, mediating the circular interactions within the body as well as the interactions between the body and the environment. Above all, a person’s relations to others continuously restructure the human brain which thus becomes an organ shaped by social interaction, biography, and culture. This concept is also crucial for a non-reductionist theory of mental disorders, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, which is developed in a special chapter.Less

Emotions and Personhood provides a framework for understanding the relationship between emotion and human experience, and attempts to understand human emotions from the combined approach of ...
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Emotions and Personhood provides a framework for understanding the relationship between emotion and human experience, and attempts to understand human emotions from the combined approach of philosophy and psychopathology, taking its models particularly from hermeneutical phenomenology and from dialectical psychopathology.Less

Empirical Ethics in Psychiatry demonstrates how ethics can engage more closely with the reality of psychiatric practice and shows how empirical methodologies from the social sciences can ...
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Empirical Ethics in Psychiatry demonstrates how ethics can engage more closely with the reality of psychiatric practice and shows how empirical methodologies from the social sciences can help foster this link.Less

This resource is a concise introduction to the growing field of philosophy of psychiatry. Divided into the three main aspects of psychiatric clinical judgement, values, meanings and facts, ...
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This resource is a concise introduction to the growing field of philosophy of psychiatry. Divided into the three main aspects of psychiatric clinical judgement, values, meanings and facts, it examines the key debates about mental health care, and the philosophical ideas and tools needed to assess those debates.
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This resource is the first philosophical account of the nature, role and variety of existential feelings in psychiatric illness and in everyday life, including feelings of familiarity, ...
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This resource is the first philosophical account of the nature, role and variety of existential feelings in psychiatric illness and in everyday life, including feelings of familiarity, unfamiliarity, estrangement, isolation, emptiness, and belonging.Less

This resource explores the evolution of morality and the roles of reason and emotion in the making of moral judgments. It describes scientific research on volitional behaviour, moral ...
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This resource explores the evolution of morality and the roles of reason and emotion in the making of moral judgments. It describes scientific research on volitional behaviour, moral decision-making, and criminality, discussing what this might mean for our practices of blame and punishment, and applying this knowledge to clinical conditions.
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This book explores the intersection of psychotherapy and virtue ethics with an emphasis on the patient’s work in a healing project. This common ground between the therapeutic process and ...
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This book explores the intersection of psychotherapy and virtue ethics with an emphasis on the patient’s work in a healing project. This common ground between the therapeutic process and the cultivation of virtues can inform the efforts of both therapist and patient. The ethics of psychotherapy revolve partly around what therapists should or should not do as well as the sort of person that therapists should be: e.g., empathic, prudent, compassionate, respectful, and trustworthy. Contemporary practitioners have argued for therapist virtues that are vitally relevant to assisting the patient’s efforts in a healing project. The ethics of a therapeutic dialogue can also revolve around the sort of person the patient should be. There is an argument for patient virtues that are crucially relevant to working through the problems in living that arise in psychotherapy, e.g., honesty, courage, humility, and perseverance. The author’s central idea is not unfamiliar to psychodynamic therapists: that treatment may need to build virtues while it ameliorates problems. As a virtue epistemic and virtue ethical endeavor, the patient’s work in psychotherapy can both challenge character strengths and result in their further development.Less

Rated as one of the top 15 breakthroughs in medicine over the last 150 years, evidence-based medicine (EBM) has become highly influential in medicine, and promotes the seemingly irrefutable ...
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Rated as one of the top 15 breakthroughs in medicine over the last 150 years, evidence-based medicine (EBM) has become highly influential in medicine, and promotes the seemingly irrefutable principle that decision-making in medical practice should be based, as much as possible, on the most up-to-date research findings. EBM has been particularly popular within psychiatry, a field that is haunted by a legacy of controversial interventions. For advocates, anchoring psychiatric practice in research data makes psychiatry more scientific valid and ethically legitimate. Few, however, have questioned whether EBM, a concept pioneered by those working in other areas of medicine, can be applied to psychiatric disorders. This resource analyzes the basic assumptions of EBM, and critically examines their applicability to psychiatry. By highlighting the basic ethical tensions between psychiatry and EBM, the author addresses the fundamental and controversial question of whether psychiatrists should practice evidence-based medicine at all.Less

This book will build on and develop the assumption that to be human means to be in dialogue. Dialogue is a unitary concept that will attempt to address in a coherent way three essential ...
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This book will build on and develop the assumption that to be human means to be in dialogue. Dialogue is a unitary concept that will attempt to address in a coherent way three essential issues for clinical practice: ‘What is a human being?’, ‘What is mental pathology?’, and ‘What is care?’. It will argue that to be human means to be in dialogue with alterity, that mental pathology is the outcome of a crisis of one’s dialogue with alterity, and that care is a method wherein dialogues take place whose aim is to re-enact interrupted dialogue with alterity within oneself and with the external world.This book is an attempt to re-establish such a fragile dialogue of the soul with herself and with others. Such an attempt is based on two pillars: a dialectic, person-centred understanding of mental disorders, and values-based practice. Building on and extending these two approaches, it aims to improve therapeutic practice in mental health care. Within this framework, care is a dialogue with a method—or better, a method wherein dialogues take place whose aim is to re-enact interrupted dialogue with alterity within oneself and with the external world. The method at issue includes devices and practices that belong both to logic—e.g. the method for unfolding the Other’s life-world and to rescue its fundamental structure—and empathy—e.g. the readiness to offer oneself as a dialoguing person, and the capacity to resonate with the Other’s experience and attune/regulate the emotional field.Less

Madness and the Demand for Recognition: A Philosophical Inquiry into Identity and Mental Health Activism is the first comprehensive philosophical examination of the claims and ...
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Madness and the Demand for Recognition: A Philosophical Inquiry into Identity and Mental Health Activism is the first comprehensive philosophical examination of the claims and demands of Mad Pride and mad-positive activism (Mad activism). Contemporary developments in mental health activism pose a radical challenge to psychiatric and societal understandings of madness. Mad activism rejects the language of mental illness and mental disorder, reclaims the term “mad,” and reverses its negative connotations. Not content with reform of psychiatry, activists seek cultural change in the way madness is viewed, and demand recognition of madness as grounds for culture or identity. But can madness constitute such grounds? Is it possible to reconcile delusions, passivity phenomena, and the discontinuity of self often seen in certain mental health conditions with the requirements for identity formation presupposed by the theory of recognition? And, in any case, why does recognition matter, and how should society respond to such demands? Locating itself in the philosophy of psychiatry, Mad studies, and activist literatures, and in the tradition of philosophical thought on recognition, freedom, and identity that begins with Georg Hegel and Immanuel Kant, and continues into the present day through the work of Charles Taylor, Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser, Kwame Appiah, and Richard Rorty, the book develops a rich theoretical framework for understanding, justifying, and responding to Mad activism’s demand for recognition. It charts a pathway for reconciling opponents and supporters of Mad activism and, ultimately, for reconciling madness and society.Less